Guild Wars 2

It depends on the character I use. The ones I play the most are the ones that are the most unlucky when salvaging. I like to think that they are cursed, and that it means I should level up another character

A while ago I left some feedback regarding the Southsun Cove events. I talked a bit about the issue of event scaling. While I wasn’t entirely right about how the scaling work (I overlooked the part about monsters getting stronger, maybe because at that time it wasn’t working the way it does now), I would like to copy what I said back then, because it’s relevant to the subject :

Events scaling : This is another major downside, and it’s also true for all of Tyria. The way the events scale is too often : “more players = more monsters”. Sometimes one or two Veterans. And that’s it. (not entirely true anymore, now there are also champions)
So, if you happen to get there in mid event, and you make your way toward a camp coming from the wrong direction, you just get steamrolled by 30 mobs attacking the camp. No chance to survive, even though you could easily kill every last one of them by taking 4 or 5 at a time. I feel like it’s a really bad game mechanic, because mobs don’t get any stronger, they don’t have more HP, they’re just more numerous. Moreover, this tend to create a lot of lag or huge frame rate drops, and the fights become a huge mayhem where you just try to tag as many mobs as possible, without really doing anything that could help your teammates. And if you’re a melee class (such as warrior or thief), you will tag a lot less mobs than if you are an AoE class.

I think it would be way better to have less mobs, with a lot more HP. That way, the fights would be clearer, longer, and so it would give more time to players to tag the enemies, and you could have a chance to regroup with the players already doing the events, without getting rolled over by a sudden pop.

I highlighted the points that are still valid in my opinion. Which is that too many mobs make the fights less readable, and that it tends to get isolated players killed too easily because of culling/frame rate/wrong place at the wrong time.

I also think that having hundreds of enemies coming out of nowhere doesn’t make a fight epic at all. It just creates a lot more confusion, and turn the fights into a mindless AoE spam.

tl;dr : Maybe too numerous mobs, or too strong mob is not really a solution. One that would help would be just more HP for them. It would help to have fights that are more easy to understand, also giving a chance to non-AoE classes to participate during those fights. Fights can also get more strategic, and rely less on mindless skill spamming.

Billy.1879:

No one else notice “Burst Hundred Blades (1¼, 10 second cool down.)”

1¼ is less than half what it is now and mobile. That would just be insane.

Maybe you haven’t read enough threads coming from the OP.
Basically, his philosophy is that if one day someone from Anet is crazy enough to listen to what he says, they will certainly nerf everything in his suggestion. So he figured that he should always comes up with completely overpowered stuff, because it’s gonna be nerfed in the end anyway.
So… yeah… well, whatever.

bhagwad.4281:

We’re all rational beings. It’s insane to demand that people act otherwise.

That’s probably one of the most frequent trite remark that you can read everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, nothing against you, but it doesn’t take to be a genius to find this logic is nonsense. We are indeed capable of being rational, but more often than not, we fail to understand the diversity of opinions and interests, and thus we make choices far from being rational. If we were to make enlightened choices every time, our world would definitely not be the same, and by that I mean it would be a lot less crappy.

Now, that being said, here is my 2 cents about the subject : This is the most interesting post in this topic : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/speech/Farmers-vs-Completers/2704100

And to share my opinion and experience on the subject, I have to say that I belong to first group, but not only for the reasons listed. I have all the achievements I need, but I do know that it’s not the case for everyone.
While I try to complete the events, I also think about all those people who still don’t have the achievement. I’m not a skritt running after its “shiny”. I’m a player that likes to succeed, to complete objectives, and to help people do so in a collective way. I like good teamwork, and I like to see what we can do when we put our heart into things.

Now on my homeworld, yesterday was nothing more than a zerg feast, with 5 commander stuck together, draining all the people to them. You would think than one blue icon on the map would be enough for that, but it looks like those commanders failed to see that when you activate your tag, you have a responsibility, which is to coordinate and help people work together. Instead of that, anyone trying to complete an event without the zerg was called a “selfish idiot”.

Nothing more to say, anyone can draw its own conclusion about the general ambiance it creates.

Bovinity.8610:

More poor game design and rushed out buggy content.

You not liking something does not make it a bug.

He is right. The achievement is bugged.
I did it 5 times in a row. Nothing. I kill Chomper first, prevent him from grabbing any meat. He doesn’t have the buff for the all fight, and in the end, I don’t get the achievement.
I spent more than two hours on that because I thought I did something wrong. And when five times in a row I literally WRECKED them, and did not get anything, I was sure it’s bugged.

And he is also right about the poor game design, the bad coding, and I may add the rushed and untested content. Every patch needs at least 5 others patches, and it doesn’t always fix everything.

Elidath.5679:

Because insulting the devs will help the process, and you know the code and their working conditions well enough to be affirmative they could have done better. Wait, no, you are just being rude for the sake of it!

They have to deal with an incredibly complex system, here, and update it every two weeks. Of course there are bugs. Never ever expect perfection from a computer system. Even space rockets blow up because of bugs, and I don’t think the NASA (or any other space agency) is “a bunch of amateurs”.

I play this game this the first beta event. I saw how it was running smoothly and with very few issues. Then I saw the release, and every day since then has brought its share of bugs, sometime new ones, sometime older ones coming back again. And it may surprise you, prepare yourself, but I actually spent money on this game ! Yeah I know, it’s incredible right ? When you pay for something, it’s pretty common to have expectation about the quality of the product. Probably something you didn’t know.

What do I care about their working condition ? It’s their work. If I develop software for a client, do you think I’m gonna say “Sir, you don’t know my working conditions, if you pay me and I give you bad work, it’s not my fault.”
And btw, their “incredibly complex system” is THEIR work. THEY did that. You don’t do something utterly complex and then say it’s not your fault. It’s your work. Either you did it good, or you don’t. Period.

I am willing to be understanding on a lot of things that don’t work as intended. But seriously, events not progressing ? Still the same thing as day one. Chest that can’t be opened ? Day one.

And don’t think that I just have unreasonably high expectations. I have always said, and I will continue to say, that I would have preferred less content, less frequent, and better worked out, rather than incredibly buggy events every months. Plus, when living story was only a one man job, I could understand the flaws. Now there are multiples teams working on it, and it’s still the same thing. So if your standards are low, and you are willing to spend your money on stuff that never improve, be my guest. But don’t project that on other people

You guys really are a bunch of amateurs…
This, plus the numerous bugs with the Gauntlet. Geez, I don’t even know what to expect next. Nothing ? Is that good enough ?

When you say “dislocated”… you mean “misplaced” I suppose?

I’m with OP on this one. I’ve already said it too, so let’s say it again here for Anet to read it : I don’t care about quantity, I don’t care if I don’t have a new crappy event to accomplish every two weeks, I don’t care that you feed me with stupid back&forth quests with no meaningful reward.
What I care about, is a bug-free content, well worked, with plenty of things to do that does not seem repetitive or boring. Even if it takes 2 months for you to make it, or even 6 months. I want QUALITY over QUANTITY. Is that clear enough for you ?

Now, I read somewhere that since the start of living story, they increased the number of people working on it. Something like, at first it was a one person job, now it’s a 3 teams job. Well let me say that it’s barely noticeable. Yes there was some improvement, but still, you keep on serving us the same bug-riddled-repetitive-crappy stuff.

On another note, very pessimistic, I also read that NCsoft plan on using GW2 money for Aion, rather than making a true expansion for GW2. So, I know it’s not Anet’s fault, I know it’s not the developpers’ fault, I know, I know.
Still it makes me sick, and I want it to be known, for maybe it’ll add up to the growing discontent.

Just finished the T4 achievement with Kiel, and now that I was able to do it, let me tell you what I think of it : It’s a huge pile of fecal matter.

All I had to do to succeed, was to pick up my thief, stuff it with full berzerker, and here we go, achievement done. This is the worst game design I ever saw, even though it’s not a surprise that Anet are capable of coming up with such a broken imbalanced mini-game. There’s no challenge in it. There’s no fun in it. And this was absolutely not a “creative way” to come up with a solution. Just buying/crafting stuff to solve a problem is a sign that your game mechanics are completely sideways.

So, take that feedback and make what you want of it, but let me tell you that succeeding in getting this achievement did not give me any sense of accomplishment.

As if you could tell the difference between day and night in this game… Good luck with that!

Wait what ? Another crappy bugged event ? How is that even possible when every last one of the events released by Anet were working perfectly smoothly without even a single issue !

Come on people ! Aren’t you getting upset a little too fast ? I mean… these people are human. Not machines ! If this was, like, the third or fourth time in a row that a buggy event is released, I would understand you. But how can you be so heartless and ruthless

I’m sorry what ? This is indeed the fourth or fifth time it has happened ? What do you say now ? Every single patch released by Anet need at least two more fix before working properly ?

Oh…. oh. Okay, keep it up then. Nevermind.

In my opinion, the best downed state abilities are the ones that allow you to evade a stomp, even if the player that tries to stomp you has stability/invulnerability.

Which is not the case for : Warrior, Engineer, Necromancer, Guardian and Ranger.

For these, you can then order them in term of how much interrupt they got, or what their skills allow them to do. Engineer has 2 different interrupt, Guardian can last a bit longer thanks to his healing seal and his AoE prevent a stealth stomp, and Warrior can use his vengeance to help revive a teammate (I think it’s the only situation where it’s worth anything, because against any good player, you won’t do anything in 10 seconds). Ranger can daze target and get his pet to revive him (so damage doesn’t interrupt your capacity to rally).

So there’s just the Necromancer left, with his fear and a lame AoE poison. I think they got the worst downed state, close to the Warrior.

Insignya.8625:

I now understand why all the content we’ve been seeing is temporary. It’s not a gift from A.net, it’s not the passionate work of designers who couldn’t care less about money – no, the sad truth is, it’s just an attempt to get people back in the game before the stuff expires. None of it is for the sake of lore or immersion, don’t let them bullkitten you – it’s the cold reality of a game that, like many, has turned rotten because of the desire of both developers and publishers to cash in on a product, rather than provide an experience worthy of remembrance.

This sums up pretty much everything.

Now, I just want to add that while I agree with Gizmo – who said that NCsoft in not a philanthropic project, and they have their bills to pay, and their money to earn – there is also something that I want to point out :
I have done every beta week end of GW2. And my thought was “They have done an amazing job. I never saw a beta with so few bugs.”
And then there was the release. And all the bugs. And then there were patches. And all the bugs. And every time there’s an update, they correct bugs, and they create new ones. And every time they add content, their content is rigged with bugs (Karka Queen, anyone ?).

I stopped playing between november and march, because one of my main interest is WvW, and the culling and lag was atrocious. In march, they patched the culling (finally !) and I found a good VPN to get rid of the lag. But still, there’s so much bugs everywhere, so much things that you would expect to be fixed since then, but are not.

So now, I just play few hours a day, sometimes none. And I know I will go on like that, until the first expansion. And then I will stop, because I won’t pay a dime as long as so many bugs persist in this game, period.

So the “not a philanthropic project” argument is completely true. But, if they deserved money for such a good job they made at first, since then they don’t deserve a penny.

3) Dungeons and General Feeling :

Now for the last part, let’s discuss the instances, and the overall feeling of the living story.
I was a bit disappointed by the dungeon with Carnach. It was really small. So small. The mines idea were pretty good, and the fight with Carnach was okay. But once again, it felt underachieved. I finally get to meet the infamous Carnach, and I don’t get to talk to him for one bit. He just jump on me, and we have to fight. That was a bit disappointing.
Maybe I could have been trapped in that cave along with him, and we got attacked by some crazed Karka, and we would have had to help each other to escape. Meanwhile, he could have stated his motivations to me, and why he did what he did. And in the end, we would still have to fight because he wouldn’t change his mind. Right now, it feels like he is the great bad guy of the story, but I kick his butt in less than 5 minutes, and we never see him again.
I took the exploration mode with subdirector Null as some sort of “bonus event”, as I had absolutely no idea what the hell he was doing here, and why he would attack me.
Same goes for the Karka Queen. One second I’m doing an event in some part of the island, and out of nowhere she pops near the settler camp. I get there, get a lot of lag and a lousy frame rate, and down she goes and… that’s it. It felt a bit rushed. No pursuit like the previous event that took place on Southsun Cove. No use of all the space available. It’s a bit disappointing. We could have chased her along with the Lion’s Guard toward her nest, and killed her near the lava pool, as a reference to the previous event some of us did. This could have resulted in a decreased population of the nearby Karkas for instance, and thus, when they get back, you know that she will come again soon. I don’t know how much work that involve, but it would have felt better that just another event like the Champion Karka near the South Camp.

Let’s conclude with the overall feeling about this living story. I’ve been criticizing a lot of things, so you would think I hated it. Well that’s not the case. It’s still free content, and it’s still more content. So I liked the fact that there were new things to do. I liked the fact that I went back to someplace I had already visited, and had new things to do. I could have liked it a lot more if the events were better paced, and a bit more story driven.
The answer to that is “Yeah, but it takes time ! It costs money ! And it’s not THAT easy to do !”. I know. So my answer to that is “I’m not paying a monthly fee. If I have to wait one month between two episodes of the living story, so things are a bit more worked out, and better shaped, I don’t mind, I’ll still be there for it”. Also, I wouldn’t mind waiting a bit more between each phase of the events, so the dev team can take time to test everything they add. I think that you have to make a choice between the people that always want more and more content, and that will go through it in less than a day, whether it took you 1 week or 1 month to make it, and the people that want better content, well paced and without bug. I don’t want to create a war between those two different thinking people, but I know that I belong to the second group.

Anyway, my final conclusion is that I liked this living story better than the Frost and Fire. So if you keep it up like that, the next one will be even better. So, take your time, make it good, and I’ll be there to tell you all the things I liked.

Cheers everyone, thanks for reading and for your opinion if you want to share it !

2) Events and local wildlife

This is where things get a little uglier. The events themselves are quite okay. Defend stuff, kill things, collect eggs… that’s the regular events we know. But two things are really, really bad in my eyes : The way events repeat themselves, and the way they scale.

Event repetition : There’s not much logic in it. I will not go over the fact that in every part of Tyria, the “world is constantly changing and adapting to what you do” tend to lose its charm once you understand how it works, and how chain-events are constructed.
In Southsun, it’s just random events happening all over the island, and you running back and forth, hoping to be there on time, or not being able to get away for the screen for more than 5 minutes if you don’t want to go back to your character being dead because some consortium guys decided to pop out of nowhere to beat up some settler. Nothing is really connected, and you don’t have the same sense of progression that you get in Arathi Highlands for example, where you help your allies by slowly conquering camps from West to East, making your way toward the final boss.
Like I said, here it’s just a game of running back and forth, mostly staying in the center/North East of the island. You never get to progress toward the Karka’s Nest in the western part of the island, giving the feeling that half of the island is useless, or just a part where you go once a day to check if there’s some ori/ancient sapling nodes, and never step foot here again for the rest of the day.

Events scaling : This is another major downside, and it’s also true for all of Tyria. The way the events scale is too often : “more players = more monsters”. Sometimes one or two Veterans. And that’s it. So, if you happen to get there in mid event, and you make your way toward a camp coming from the wrong direction, you just get steamrolled by 30 mobs attacking the camp. No chance to survive, even though you could easily kill every last one of them by taking 4 or 5 at a time. I feel like it’s a really bad game mechanic, because mobs don’t get any stronger, they don’t have more HP, they’re just more numerous. Moreover, this tend to create a lot of lag or huge frame drop rate, and the fights become a huge mayhem where you just try to tag as many mobs as possible, without really doing anything that could help your teammates. And if you’re a melee class (such as warrior or thief), you will tag a lot less mobs than if you are an AoE class.
I think it would be way better to have less mobs, with a lot more HP. This way, the fights would be clearer, longer, and so it would give more time to players to tag the enemies, and you could have a chance to regroup with the players already doing the events, without getting rolled over by a sudden pop.

About the local wildlife, even though most of the mobs are a bit annoying (nasty Reef Rider stealing my boons !!), they are okay… except for the Reef drakes. Geez, those ones. Anet nerfed the confusion condition in PvP, but kept it the same in PvE. And these guys… they stack WAY TO MUCH confusion. And it lasts for FIFTEEN BLOODY SECONDS. What the heck ? I can easily solo every veteran Karka on this island, but 4 or 5 of these drakes kill me in a matter of seconds, even though I have 3 different ways to clear my conditions. This is completely broken. And even if you try to be patient, time your attacks, stun and interrupt as much as possible, and wait when you have to much condition… this confusion lasts for 15 seconds, so you can’t do anything ! And by the time it’s almost over, you get more stacks, renewing the duration of the condition. That’s plain silly.

On another subject, I was a bit frustrated with most of the Veteran Karkas attacks. Most of their attacks require you to dodge two times in a row. That means to used up all of your endurance at once. If you dodged something else earlier, or if there’s another enemy involved that forced you to dodge, you’re done, and you’re gonna get hit by the next attack. I’m talking about those annoying shockwaves, the one they send by 2 when they jump – which is really weird, 1 jump = 2 separate successive shockwaves – and the ones that come by 5 when they hit the ground with their legs.
Also, their “roll thing” is a bit bad, especially when they get stuck in a tiny coral, which makes them stay in the same place. Their roll should stop as soon as they hit something. This is as logical as the fact that they can evade your attacks by “carapacing”. I would understand if they block my attack, but the evades just make no sense at all.

(Third and last point in next post).

1) General stuff, story & achievements

Here we are again, Southsun Cove round 2. I think it’s a good thing we’re back in this part of the World, because this area always left me with a feeling of unfinished business. It was just another place were some events took place, but not like a real part of Tyria.
I could say it was kind of lazy from Anet to use some previous content like that but :
a. It feels like they did not forgot about it, which is a good thing,
b. The changes that were made were a lot more consequent that some annoying sonic radars and dead PNJs all over the place, with a hint a solo instances here and then (Yeah, I’m talking about the Flame and Frost stuff).

The island is the same, with the same environment, which is pretty good looking. Really different atmosphere depending on which part of the island you’re on. I like the way it looks, this dangerous paradise feeling, so great job here.

The story in itself was not the most interesting thing I’ve seen, but I reckon it’s hard to feel implicated without having intrusive story-telling mechanics that interfere too much with the player progression in Tyria.
My only regret is that we weren’t able to choose a “side” a bit more. The boons you get from talking to the consortium/settler representative were just used for achievements that you could do in less than 30 minutes (and after that, it’s not a choice, 300% MF ? Yeah count me in!) and I think it would have been better if we could choose between two options (like for the personal story, when you have two possibilities to move forward in your story) leading to different exclusive titles, for example, “Consortium supporter” or “Settler Protector”, and you could only get one, with the general outcome of the story being the same.

The achievements were okay, not too hard to get, and the fact that you had 11 samples where only 10 were required was a good thing for people who didn’t want to bother with the jumping puzzle. I would really like to see more of that in the future, where you have one objective, but different way to complete it, that’s really good thinking.
Aside from that, I really felt that this sample thing was a bit lame. The “detection” skill was near useless, and didn’t help at all to locate where the samples were. I would have hoped for something a bit more like the Mad King events, where you had hints on where to find the next pages of the book, and you could find them through logic and your knowledge of Tyria. In Southsun it was more like “Let’s spam that skill…. 1… nothing… 1 nothing… 1… still nothing. How do they want me to find that stuff ? What am I supposed to do ? Does it do anything anyway ? Meh, let’s go on Dulfy”.

The crab toss activity was pretty good, but in the future you should think a bit more of a matchmaking thingy, so people new or bad at the game could still have a good time without being run over by more experienced players. I had no trouble with that, and I got my CrabToss achievements pretty quickly, but my wife gave up really fast because she felt like she would not get a grasp on that game ever (and trust me, in other parts of the game such as WvW, she is wayyyy better than me, so skill has little to do with this).

The number of achievements to unlock was reasonable, the only remark that I could make is that it’s too bad that all of them were integrated at once. I don’t know how hard it is to add them, but to make them invisible, or to add only the ones that we could complete would have been a bit better. This way, you don’t have to wonder which one you can do now, and which one is for later on. And also, you don’t get spoiled

(second point in next post)

Hello everyone, players and members of the Anet team.

Now that all the steps of the Southsun Living Story have been revealed, I thought I would submit a review about the events we’ve been through. Let’s just say it’s both a way to give some feedback to the dev’ team, and also a way to discuss it with other players. I’ll try to be as thorough as possible, and as brief as possible.

/!\ Disclaimer /!\ As usual in this kind of topic, this is a personal opinion, and I don’t pretend to have “the truth” about anything. This is just my feeling on how things went, want I liked and what I disliked, along with some suggestion on how things could have been better. If your opinion is different, feel free to express it, as long as you stay polite and respectful. Humor is also a good thing, but only to the point where it doesn’t become mockery or trolling. Thank you.

Let’s just lay out how I intend to do this thing. First, I think it would be a good thing to talk about general things, like environment, story and achievements. Then, I will go over the events and the local wildlife (yeah, the mobs). Finally, I will talk about the Dungeons, and the general feeling of this living story, how implicated I felt in all of this.
I will make three different posts, each about one point, so it’s more readable (and also because I have a lot to write, and the message length must be less than 5001 !)
If you intend to go through all of it, please take your time to read, so you don’t get sick by the end of it

1) General stuff, story & achievements
2) Events and local wildlife
3) Dungeons and General Feeling

Pro tip : Don’t use GS.

Go for hammer, and bash those guys in the ground.

You’re welcome !

Some mixed feelings for me here.

- Awesome work by John Smith, and especially on communication. Keeping people informed that you cared about what they say, and that you were taking an interest and working was the good way to proceed. For that, you deserve all of our praises.

- Anet, once again, showing that their work is sloppy, and their game is just a mess. Bugs coming out of nowhere, even when no major changes were done to the game mechanics. This is really disappointing, annoying, and really really worrisome. How long are we gonna have to put up with this ? Every time they release a patch, every doggy time, it takes them up to 3 or 4 additional patches to make it work properly. This is really not a game where I want to put any more penny.

As things are right now, let me tell you straight away, if you were to release an expansion (ie. major content for which you have to pay), that would definitely be the end of it for me.

This had to be said.

Serophous.9085:

darkace.8925:

Serophous.9085:

I believe i read somewhere from someone who was in beta that the trait system was last thing implemented before release, so didnt get much testing.

Anet said they are going to be going over traits and redoing some, so why fix something bugged that may not be there in the future?

Because it’s the professional thing to do.

List of things people want asap:

blablabla lots of nonsense…

You have one month. Go.

You’re completely missing the point of the OP, and the ones who answered to him. We don’t need NEW stuff. We need for the ACTUAL STUFF to work properly. For bugs existing since the release to be fixed.
Especially for people playing a lot of WWW and SPvP. They don’t care about new content. They want the existing one to be fixed, and to work as it should.

You’re just making this conversation deviate from its purpose, so refrain from posting your nonsense, thank you.

Charr are bad for jumping puzzle, and their legs are too small, making legs armors a bit dull.
But on the other side, male humans look like young teenagers or cherubs, and that’s even worse if you put a beard on them, because it will look like a totally fake beard.

So, I guess you can just flip a coin.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

As I stated in another thread, despite the suspicious timing, the update did NOT contain any content changes. The changes to the Lyssa Temple event are totally unrelated.

So there were changes to the Lyssa Temple, but there was no content changes in the update. So changes were made, but no content was changed… It was an update that did not do any change, so it wasn’t an update.

Now my head hurts.

Lag + someone at the door + phone ringing + the cat jumping on the keyboard at the same time = he missed his rush. Probably.
Or he just messed up ^^

Callahan.3180:

It’s not the case. Do testing yourself as I have and you’ll notice that the .15 sec difference is invaluable. It allows you to chain a crippling slash, weapon swap, and then you can even hit with back breaker. I do know that for most conditions, 0 counts as another second because it doesn’t remove when it hits 0, but when 0 goes to practically -1 second. Stun duration stacking is different than boon duration, in that there’s not really a cap time. With condition duration there is a cap time for example. I believe you can’t go over 100% condition duration.

Indeed, I tested it after posting, and as you said, it make quite a difference.
Thank you for the detailed explanation!

edit : Btw, I suggested hydromancy because I don’t use intelligence on my hammer. I have a pretty decent amount of crit, especially when I’m buffed, so I dont feel the need to use it, particularly because it is a one-time bonus every 10 seconds (implying I have the trait to reduce duration on weapon swap), and I prefer something more permanent, as I tend to mess it up with the auto-attack T_T

Callahan.3180:

If you move to SS make sure you carry that sigil of paralyzation so that your shield bash carries over to your back breaker.

That makes me think about something I heard of, maybe you can confirm it or invalidate it : When you gain a “XX%” bonus to duration, it’s only if the bonus is a full second that it applies.
For instance, shield bash is 1 sec. So adding 15% duration to 1 sec would not make a full second, and thus wouldn’t change anything. I don’t know if I’m clear in my explanations ? Please tell me if I’m not.

Anyway, if that were to be true, it would be meaningless to use the superior sigil of paralyzation, wouldn’t it ? In that case, I think I would prefer to use a superior sigil of hydromancy.

While waiting for your answer, I’m gonna make some tests in the mists.
Thanks in advance for your input

edit : Ok, after some test the %15 stun duration does make a huge difference. I’m gonna run with that then. Thanks for your advice.

Good video, thanks for sharing it.

The only thing that I wish for is to have so little skill-lag as you do. Most of the time it took a good second for my 4th skill on hammer to launch, and this is really game changing.
I’m running with H/AS right now, but I might switch to H/SS after seeing your video. I’m gonne give some thoughts about that.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

@Johnson (No offense, you sound well-intentioned.) Everything you said in that post is false. They can and do handle client-side hacking. They do want people to discuss hacks so they can counter them, and don’t sweep them under the rug. They ban players based on evidence, not number of reports. They do have the tools to verify whether or not players are hacking, but they disclose very little information about them. And there are things that can be done about hacking.

No offense taken, and I know I sound a bit bitter so I wouldn’t take any

Anyway, I’m just reporting what I read on a guild forum.

edit : Deleted my message, I don’t want people to get too curious about it. Let’s just say I heard differently and leave it at that.

It’s not a bug, nor an exploit, it’s a hack.
Basically, these guys remove the textures from the game, and can target any place they want that are not supposed to be reachable.

Yeah, it’s a shame. And nobody can’t do anything about it, because it’s happening on the client side, thanks to Anet incredible skillz at coding their game.
You can try a mass report report on the guys manning the arrowcarts, but sometimes it’s hard to do so while in combat.

KingClash.3186:

Way to go, give absolutely no constructive criticism…

I do not entirely agree with what he said, neither am I with what the OP said, but he did provide us with good answer to every point he quoted. You’re just being sour.

There’s a lot of hacking going on in GW2, mainly because a lot of the processed information happen on the client side, which is out of Anet control.
Unfortunately, Anet doesn’t like this subject to be discussed on their forum (bad publicity + trying to hide things under the rug), so my guess is your thread isn’t gonna last long.

The only case where they ban a player for cheating is when there’s a lot of reports on that player, but actually they don’t have many ways to verify it themselves because they lack the tools to do so.

So, except from saying thakitten makes me sad, nothing much can be done about it.

Geez… this is sad. I was hoping at least one WvW area was spared.

Anet, please, tell us your secret. How do you manage to come up with such a bug without patching anything ?
Do you have special power that creates bugs every time your feel like it ? Did you implement a special switch that you can flip so it messes up your game ?

I’m so impressed, I don’t even know how you do it.

From what I’ve been told, the issue is with the Waypoints. Each time you get near a Keep which has a waypoint (so, garrison for example), you get disconnected.

This bug only seems to occur in the borderlands, and not in EB.

edit : The issue is also described in this topic :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Keep-waypoints

I will not, except if :

- They fix all of the bugged traits of all classes.
- They add REAL dynamic events, with different outcomes depending on success/failure (at least 2 or 3 for each major event of a zone)
- They stop using those nasty invisible walls everywhere in a game where jumping is so important.
- They stop breaking their game and creating new bugs each time they release a patch.
- They make Trahearne die in the most horrible and vicious way.
- They finally learn to code their game properly and get rid of all the cheaters in SPvP and WvW.

Some of those points are more important than others, but I really can’t see myself giving them even one penny if they don’t do at least half of it.

Congrats to Anet, for debugging this…. which is still bugged.

Now, it can also happen when downed.
Today I tried to dodge an attack (which killed me during my dodge btw, cheers to you on this one too), got downed. The mob died, and once I rallied, my character did the dodge that I tried to do previously.

On the same note, I was in Orr today. A spider managed to immobilize me during a dodge roll. I finished my roll, and got immobilizied at the end of it. And dodged again once free, even though I did nothing.

For a core game mechanic such as this, to be so buggy is really, really, lame.

Khisanth.2948:

That seems to be an issue with specific skills rather than just not stacking. Specifically 4 on focus for mesmer. Never heard of anything else not stacking swiftness.

The swiftness stacking bug do happen on warrior, if you use signet of rage and warhorn, when you try to add swiftness with a banner, it either will not work or remove the duration you got from the warhorn.

Wasn’t fixed in the latest patch. It seems dodging is not that important for Anet.

LameFox.6349:

Actually, being saturated in control effects just isn’t enjoyable in general. If you can avoid it no difference is made, if you’re constantly stuck in it until death it’s frustrating, and if you have the resilience to ride it out and save some stability just in case (i.e. my approach right now) it’s tedious.

It took Anet something like 9 months to finally admit that they messed up with Orr, and that it was more annoying than anything, and needed some major tuning.
Wanna bet how long it takes them to have the same idea a second time ?

Same thing here, I created a topic about it and didn’t saw yours. So —> bump. ^^

Well I guess I’m a trooper since I read all of your post OP. First of all, I regret that most of the people ranting in this post didn’t really get what you were trying to do. I understand that you’re not trying to complain, but rather try to have a more lucid and logical approach of a game mechanic, in order to discuss it in the most intelligent way possible. I liked the fact that you tried to break down the stealth mechanic as much as possible, in order to properly discuss it, rather than just considering it as a “one key hide skill”, like a lot of people in this thread (from both “sides”) are trying to do.

Now, you’ve said a lot of thing, and I don’t think I’ll be able to bring anything insightful about stealth in it-self, or the way Anet has implemented it in GW2. Furthermore, I think they have their own vision of how stealth should work, and there’s nothing that we can say that will make them change their mind about, though that doesn’t mean we can’t try to bring a more interesting turn to this conversation.

So, since you said all this nifty stuff about stealth, I think it’s more interesting to bring up another thief-related – and thus stealth-related – issue in this conversation, which is “How can a thief be played, due to the stealth mechanics”.

Indeed, I think one of the main issue is that, compared to other classes, there are a lot less ways to play a thief, than you can play any other classes. I mean, you can choose to make a bunker Warrior, or a glass canon one. In each of these archetypes, you can choose between different kinds of weapons, and different style to do damages (direct damages vs conditions). Same goes for the Elementalist, which can take more of a “support” role, or choose to specialize in damage dealing, and so on. Until recently, the Mesmer also had different playstyles, but since confusion/retaliation damages have been greatly reduced, their choices dwindled accordingly.

Let’s get to the point : In my opinion, and I might be wrong, and I do hope people will express their opinion if it is different, Thieves have less options in the matter of how to play their class. I feel that this is caused by the stealth mechanics you described, and the way this profession has been conceived, but I think that Thieves can only rely on stealth to do their deed. It’s all about trying to sneak up on your target (which can be alone, or within a group), deal as much damage as possible in the less time possible, and go back to a safe place to prepare your next move.
From what I have tried, and seen, it is very difficult for a thief to be useful (when in a group) or effective (when alone), by adopting another approach of the fights. Playing a toughness build is not interesting for a Thief, because other than being less squishy, it lacks other ways to be of use for its group, or it will simply lack the necessary output to kill its target. Where a Warrior or a Guardian can use a lot of CC/banners/shouts to distribute boons and support their teammates, a thief has only limited options in this matter, and can only shine with its damage.

So, in my opinion, this is where “stealth” is an issue in people’s mind. Thief = Stealth = Heavy Damage or Target fleeing. This is because it’s the only thing a Thief can rely onto, and because other than dealing damage, it’s really hard to find another use for this profession, when others can be of use in more or less different ways. On a side note, you can also be of some help with blind skills, but it’s nothing compared to the advantage given by stealth, I think.

Thank you for reading and for further thoughts about that.

Vayne.8563:

I was just thinking about this, and you know, I hardly ever run a dungeon WITH a warrior. Almost never. Oh, ocassionally here and there, but they’re the real exception to the rule. And then I thought about it….

Why not make dungeon groups and exclude warriors from them. Just post something on gw2lfg.com that looks like this.

Want to run SE Path 1…warriors need not apply!

First it would be funny to see how they like it, particularly if lots of people start doing it, but more, it would give everyone else a chance to get in their dungeon runs, without kowtowing to the efficiency slaves.

I think it’s a good move.

My main is a warrior.
I don’t play a berserker warrior (Full Soldier set). I don’t play a full dps build (0/0/25/30/15). I don’t ever use GS (Hammer/Axe+Shield).
And I wouldn’t want to group with you.

I dont play Mesmer, but just posting to say the nerf of confusion is utterly idiotic. It was the ONE condition that forced players to play with a little brain, to be careful of what they were doing rather than spamming their skills like brainless. And now one of the 2 (maybe 3) way to play a mesmer has been killed.

Goodjob Anet, maybe one day you’ll play your own game and notice all the things you got wrong.

OP is speaking on any players behalf, and thank you for that.

Who the hell want to play a game full of bugs? Seriously ? Some time ago, I was logging in at least once a day. Now, it’s just twice a week. I log in, check the guild panel, say hi to the 2 people left who didn’t stopped playing already. Then I try to do something, and most of the time, it fails.
WvW ? Culling issue still there.
Dungeons ? Opening of the doors of Arah was bugged last time I checked (big surprise !)

You know what, I’m gonna stop right here. Don’t want to complain. The only cash you saw from me was when I bought the game, and this’ll be the last.

I’m gonna do a good action tomorrow. I’m gonna do something which will both benefits me, the other players, and Anet.

I’m not gonna participate in that one time event on Sunday.

Why ? Hmmm, many reasons :

- The lag. The fuppying (contraction of a bad word and puppy. I find it better than kitten) LAG. "Yeah guys ! Let’s do an event in the middle of Lion’s Arch, with so many people (even in overflow) that you don’t even see anything ! No NPC, no players, no mobs ! But…. let’s make it so the mobs can kill you ! Awesome !

- The event in itself. Another boring killing task when you don’t even know what you’re doing here and what’s going on. For like thirty minutes of mashing your keys in hope your skill finally launches. Yeah ! Thank you Anet \o/ That’s so unlike any other MMO I’ve played !

- Who needs such events ? I mean, why would we want events, or investigation so stupid that they send you a mail telling you step by step what to do ? Any rewards ? No of course not, the rewards are just there to make you spend your money in useless things. So, who cares ?

Anyway, on Sunday, just know that there will be one free spot that I leave to anyone who has the courage to do that boring, uninteresting, stuff. Yeah, stuff. That’s the name it deserve.

I’m sorry you didn’t get any answers sooner.

I guess when this happens, most of the people just think that there is an issue with their connection, or that it’s just temporary.
But I just want to confirm what you said : I often have a delay when I activate some of my skills, and sometimes they would never launch unless I button mash. Very often, I try to use a skill, and if I’m not careful and I use another one too soon, the previous one didn’t even had time to launch.

I guess this lag is coming from their server, because I can have some of this latency in an area, and then if I go to someplace else, the delay is less perceptible, or worse.

Frederick Vael : I know what you mean. But keep in minds that each stack has 25 tools. So it means OP didn’t get anything after 50 unique gathering.

On a side note, I recently used black lion’ kitten axe and sickle too. Lots of dandelion with the sickle, and not a single rare material with the pick axe. And I know this is about streak of bad luck, but even with the orichalcum pick axe, I still get between 5 and 10 orbs each time I gather all nodes from Orr. Not a single one with the black lion’ kitten axe.

xiv : good one ^^

I read somewhere on this forum that the “responsiveness” of triple chop was actually changed some days ago, but it’s only now that they include it in a patch note.

I’m sorry I’m not helping much. I don’t know what it means either.

neon.4863:

I know devs don’t control TP prices, so I’m not exactly blaming anyone – but as it is, paying customers are being ripped off by buying chests and would use their money better by exchanging gems for gold and forging chests instead. This situation may inadvertently have created an “exploit” for getting chests for fewer gems than originally intended.

Thanks for your post.
To be honest, I almost never buy gems, especially with real money, considering the price of stuff being sold there. For example, right now, a black lion’s salvage kit cost somewhere along 3.5g. For 25 charges. And for every other conversion you try to make, the price seems completely ridiculous.
Things being as they are, I’m not gonna spend any penny on the shop.

I would be a tad less worried about that build if there was a priority order in which people are healed. Meaning, people with the lowest health receive my heal, and not necessarily the ones closest to me.

Any insight about that ?